Russia’s giant war games in eastern Siberia, which end tomorrow, are meant as a blunt message that it is ready for war and knows how to wage it — but are also a revealing indication of weakness, according to western defence experts and security sources.

Exercises in which 3,000 Chinese troops are participating with a vast Russian force have raised the worrying prospect of Moscow joining communist China in an anti-western axis.

“They’re saying if you carry on making us a pariah, we’ll throw in our lot with China and you won’t be able to cope,” General Sir Richard Barrons, former commander of Britain’s joint forces command, told The Sunday Times. “They’re saying, ‘Don’t mess with us.’”

The manoeuvres involving thousands of aircraft and tanks…

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